New, Shiny Destroyers

The destroyers are the big heavy hitters of your fleet. Their job is to throw out as many punches as possible without being hit themselves

The US ones above are based off of a .50 cal round and an american two-pronged plug, respectively.

The soviet ones below, on the other hand, are meant to look like a vodka bottle (how original) and a nice little Ming dynasty vase. 

Both of these sets of concepts use engines stolen from an earlier piece. 

Capital Ships

Taking a couple of my previous engine designs I thought that I'd try to update the feel of my Capital Ship class.

Riffing heavily off of the main cultures that inspire the two factions I came up with the concepts above. Both of these designs are also based off of some of my earlier capital ship stuff as can be seen below.

Oh, and I though I'd throw this in for good measure. It's just  a side by side comparison of my very early ship class concepts next to my newer ones.

Planets

The game is set in space and planets are an important part of space in my opinion so I though I'd paint a few. Gives me a break from painting ships at least.

Ta-Dah! So the idea is that you have three types: gas giants, terrestrial planets and ice giants. In-game the notion is that control of gas giants is needed for a steady supply of fuel for your faction, terrestrial world are for your colonies and for metallic resources and your ice giants are for reagents to advance your factions technological prowess. 

Shuttles!!

I say shuttles, in-game they are supposed to be the "support frigate" class, but they're meant to look shuttle-like so I just call them shuttles. These frigates are the healer type ship for your fleet, very important for keeping the rest of your fleet up to scratch but very delicate.

The US ones above are very sleek and jet-like. Their CAC counterparts below however are meant to look beefier and more rugged, a couple aren't even really passable as shuttles.

Oh, and the antennae/satellite dish looking things on their noses are their heal beam emitters. They heal other ships by shooting a glowing green beam at them. Gotta love the realism...

   

Engines

Engines, for me, are the most fun part of a spaceship to design. The basis of an engine design can go on to help inform the design of other aspects of a ship. So with this in mind I did exactly what you would think I would do. Do some engine concepts.

My favourite are the second, forth, fifth and ninth but I'm quite proud of all of 'em.

Ship Re-thinking

One need only look at the time stamp for this post to know that I'm bad at this whole update-as-you-go-diary like aspect of blogging. For me it is something that you more so approach with a panicked scurry as the deadline looms. I works for me though, so I won't complain.

Taking on feedback from my presentation before Christmas I though I'd revisit the design of my destroyers to make them more fun and try and inject them with some more thematically-sensible pzazz rather than leave them as boring old cylinders.

      

The result. Gone are the trusses and solar panels and here are large, blimp-esque forms, over-the-top nose cones, nuclear warhead designs, be-engined space rocks and errrr... french fries. They're more fun and humorous and therefore more appropriate for the tone of the game.

Faction Leaders: Supreme Commisar Laika

The leader of the Soviet Systems Alliance takes the form that you would immediately expect a leader of a communist space empire would: a hyper-intelligent psychic dog in a large mech suit. It's a no brainer really.

Having been sent up into space in 1957 on a scientific mission from which she was to not return it was though that Laika died as her small capsule began to overheat. Alas, as it turns out this was not the case, near death the small mongrel entered a state of transcendental meditation. For over 100 years Laika communed with great star spirits and the entities of higher planes learning and evolving, she returned to Russia in a fireball to lead her people to victory and glory.

The idea of giant mech overlord came before the dog-in-a-mech idea for me. My first idea was for the Soviets to be lead by some sort of Soviet Computer AI but this quickly scrapped in favour of a psychic dog. Working in Photoshop I tried to develop a nice range of soviet-inspired mech suits.

  Whist the designs of the suit part varied quite wildly the dog-in-water-tank aspect stayed constant. I don't really know why she's kept in a water tank but it looks the part. Next to concept was Laika herself sans suit. Spoiler alert: I can draw dogs to save my life.

I got through three until I thought "F*ck it, the third one'll do".

And so it did.

With an idea for suit and do formed I started my line work.

Small legs, big torso and big gloves. Perfect. A few hours of painting later and the result was:

Glorious Psychic Space Dog, complete with bestarred red and chrome mech suit. The flowing red cape and glowing, all-knowing eyes completes the bill.

Of course, looking at those cowboy-feet, a little more work was needed just to polish the paint up off properly.

Laika, highlighted, colour corrected and de-cowboyfeeted (?).

Faction Leaders: Admiral-President Trumbo

New term, new stuff. No more ship stuff for a while it's character time, more specifically the faction leaders. Taking on board some advice from my last round of feedback just before the Christmas holiday it thought it would be a good idea to expand on the aesthetic and explore it through the designs of the two faction commanders.

The first leader, the one detailed in this post, is the leader of the United Systems of America. He is a completely original character, not in any way, shape or for inspired by or based off of a certain sitting President of a certain western superpower. I assure you that any resemblance that can be seen is purely coincidental and that I most definitely did not go out of my way to lampoon or satirise the appearance or personality of any world leader especially not the 45th President of the United States of America Donald John Trump... because that would be absurd...

I began my initial concept work for Admiral-President in my sketch book exploring different costume designs and personality driven poses for the Admiral-President (as well as outlandish quiff designs). With a fairly rounded feel as to what the character was supposed to be like I began my line work in Photoshop.

Squat, rotund. bequiffed, besceptered and kitted out in a military inspired uniform of appropriate quasi-dictatorial design, I felt like I nailed our smug little wannabe-emperor. 

   A few hours in Photoshop later and this was the end result... At least it was until it was pointed out to me that his left leg was a tad janky... and the colour a little washed out. A wee bit more work was needed for the final result.

Muah. Perfecto. Brighter, cleaner, nicer to look at Trumbo-2.0.